Islam is a faith like no other in that we celebrate acts of worship. Our main two celebrations, Eid, both happen around two (of five) of the pillars of faith: fasting and pilgrimage.
(more…)Tag: Ramadan
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Ramadan is a boot camp for the soul, and in the last ten nights we should continue to build a fortress to keep our soul safe with four essential building blocks, while also striving to forgive one another and bury old grudges.
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No idea where I got the energy this morning but I was up at 7:30am with nothing to do with everyone asleep. Flipped through my twitter feed looking for some hope in the world and couldn’t really process anything since I was still half asleep. I didn’t formally wake up until 11:00am when everyone else was finally awake.
We have moved over a month ago but we have a room in the house that we basically just stuffed with everything we didn’t feel like putting away. I was motivated this morning to sort through the piles of books, papers, toys, newspapers and every other thing that could occur to you. I dragged my mom along with even though she insisted that it would take too much time and we should just do it after Ramadan.
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For tonight I am lost for words but came across a blog that expresses a lot of what I am experiencing.
With being halfway through Ramadan 2014, I’ve been giving a lot of thought towards bettering myself this month. One of the things I’ve learned more than almost anything else is how we are very fragile people, and we need to easier on ourselves. It’s important that we do our best to be better ourselves, but when we fail or fall, we shouldn’t give up.
Before Ramadan began, I wrote out a list of goals I had set out for myself. I was determined to let go of some bad habits, develop some new ones, and establish a stronger relationship with Allah. I have to say, it has been a lot tougher than I had anticipated. I figured that if I gave myself a strict schedule, or if I wrote a list of tasks every day and worked on every task one at a time, I’d reach my goals very easily. Then, reality punched me in the face. And for that, I am thankful. You see, I realized that those approaches to reaching my goals were great, but I had to be prepared for the journey of accomplishing them. That meant that I would fall, that I would mess up, that I would make mistakes, and that the key was that I didn’t let that stop me from trying again.
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I didn’t realize it at first but I have been impatiently waiting for Ramadan, not consciously waiting but for some time I could feel the disparity in my heart for an opportunity to start over and my mind for some clarity. A couple of nights ago I read that one should start Ramadan with the intensity that in which they ended the last and so I cuddled in the calmness of my grandparents’ home I took out my iPad and started read Surat Al-Zumar. This Surah is one that doesn’t make me cry, it makes me weep into a flood of tears; the main verses that stand out for me are the ones that speak about forgiveness of God.
قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَى أَنفُسِهِمْ لا تَقْنَطُوا مِن رَّحْمَةِ اللَّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ
Say, “O My servants who have transgressed against themselves [by sinning], do not despair of the mercy of Allah . Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful.”
That was what I did to get myself ready for Ramadan and what it allowed me to do is welcome Ramadan with an open heart knowing that God’s Mercy is in my reach and it also gave me a head start Imaan boost.